The invention disclosed herein relates generally to user interfaces and, in particular, to graphical user interfaces for use with text-to-speech and automated speech recognition systems.
Voice or speech recognition and generation technology is gaining in importance as an alternative or supplement to other, conventional input and output devices. This will be particularly true with continued improvements and advances in the underlying software methodologies employed and in the hardware components which support the processing and storage requirements. As these technologies become more generally available to and used by the mass market, improvements are needed in the techniques employed in initializing and modifying speech recognition and generation systems.
A few products exist which allow users to process files of text to be read aloud by synthesized or recorded speech technologies. In addition, there are software products used to process spoken language as input, identify words and commands, and trigger an action or event. Some existing products allow users to add words to a dictionary, make modifications to word pronunciations in the dictionary, or modify the sounds created by a text-to-speech engine.
However, users of these products are required to understand and employ specialized information about grammar, pronunciation, and linguistic rules of each language in which word files are to be created. Moreover, in some of these products the means of representing pronunciations requires mastery of a mark-up language with unique pronunciation keys not generally used in other areas.
As a result, these products make text-to-speech and automated speech recognition technology inflexible and less accessible to the general public. They require users to become experts in both linguistic rules and programming techniques. The inflexibility arises in part because these products use general rules of the language in question to determine pronunciation without regard to context, such as geographic context in the form of dialects, or individual preferences regarding the pronunciation of certain words such as names.
Further, the existing products generally provide less than satisfactory results in pronunciations or translations of pronunciations. The products do not perform well with respect to many types of words including acronyms, proper names, technological terms, trademarks, or words taken from other languages. Nor do these products perform particularly well in accounting for variations in pronunciations of words depending on their location in a phrase or sentence (e.g., the word “address” is pronounced differently when used as a noun as opposed to a verb).
As a result, there is a need for a user interface method and system which expresses pronunciation rules and options in a simple way so that nonexpert users can take fuller advantage of the benefits of text-to-speech and speech recognition technologies.